Yes, they’re nice and convenient, but I highly doubt the high occupancy is just about the design. I think it has more to do with our lack of good public spaces and well-designed, functional parks. Ask Thais living in NYC, I bet most would choose a nice park over any Bangkok mall.
In malls in Asia in general, the food is either on the top floor or the bottom floor. Most of the time it's on the bottom floor.
That's where the food is in One Bangkok, a shopping complex costing about $3.4 billion that opened in the Thai capital in 2024. This explains a lot about why Bangkok's malls are packed while American ones are closing.
In the United States, malls were built around department stores, known in the business as anchors. A Macy's or a Nordstrom would sit at either end of the building, so you'd have to walk past every other shop to get there.
When the department stores died, the malls went with them. When Nordstrom said it was going to leave the Westfield mall in downtown San Francisco, in 2023, the mall's owners defaulted on their $558-million mortgage a few weeks later. In November 2025, the banks acquired the mall at auction for $133 million, about a tenth of its 2016 value. It was reported to be 95% vacant, with just two restaurants left in the food court.
Bangkok moved the anchor. Lunch is the new department store.
As the property firm Knight Frank has noted, Thailand's malls have been able to maintain occupancy rates of over 90% by handing space to restaurants and clinics, businesses that still benefit from foot traffic. The traditional split between retail and food in a mall used to be 70% to 30%, but it no longer holds, the head of retail at CBRE Thailand said earlier this year. Malls are now turning previously empty roof space into new restaurant floors. One Bangkok's food floor has more than 250 restaurants along a loop that's about a mile long.
I had a bowl of udon there.
California, Bay Area, probably $20, $25. This is $4 and no tip. You don't have to tip.
Food is of course cheaper in Thailand, and wages are lower, so this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison, though not leaving a tip is nice. What I truly can't get back home is the place itself.
In the Bay Area, where I live, the closest thing I can find is Valley Fair, in Santa Clara.
Our nicest mall is like... I don't have anything like this. We have Valley Fair. That's like our best thing.
Nothing in America is the equivalent of One Bangkok, or of ICONSIAM, on the Chao Phraya River. ICONSIAM, which opened in 2018 and cost 54 billion baht, or about $1.7 billion, has a ground floor that replicates a Thai town, spans four acres and was built to host over 3,000 local shops from all of Thailand's 77 provinces.
Even in Bangkok, the malls that haven't pivoted to food are struggling. CBRE expects occupancy across the city's malls to fall below 90% this year, which hasn't happened in years. The malls that are thriving are the ones that have gotten away from relying on retail, because shopping has gone online, and dining with family has not.
A cobertura brasileira da eleição americana fala bastante sobre "primeiro homem abertamente gay no senado", "primeira governadora indígena", "primeira governadora negra". Tem na Folha, no G1, nos jornais da Globo. Parece uma vitória "progressista", de esquerda.
Mas há muito menos destaque sobre isso na mídia americana. Tem matérias, mas não tava na capa do New York Times, Washington Post ou CNN.
Lendo a cobertura e alguns artigos, tenho sensação de que o tema "representatividade" é menos relevante hoje, e os candidatos democratas mal falavam sobre isso. Eles viram que dizer que a candidata seria a primeira whatever não é o que move votos. Falar sobre inflação, guerra e corrupção, sim.
Inclusive é um erro ler essa tsunami como vitória "da esquerda". Nas disputas mais difíceis, ganhou quem era mais centrista. Das mais de 200 cadeiras da Câmara vencidas pelos democratas, há no máximo 15 dos "Democratas socialistas". Os candidatos apoiados por Bernie Sanders tiveram performance pior que a média.
Alguns exemplos: Josh Turek, democrata que venceu a vaga para o senado em Iowa (onde Trump havia vencido por 14 pontos em 2024), tinha propagandas falando que apoiava uma lei para dividir categorias esportivas por sexo biológico e iria brigar para proibir que o sistema público de saúde financiasse cirurgias de transição.
James Talarico, que venceu no Texas, fala sobre o "wokismo" assim:
James Talarico responds to AOC calling woke 1.0 crazy, policing people's language is performative politics, and it stops you from building a coalition
“I do think that there was a rise in performative politics in people who are more concerned about using the right words, usually determined by academia”
“Those are unifying values that we all agree on.”
“But when you start policing people's language, when you start judging people because they're not up on the right terminology, you're no longer building a coalition to address those real problems”
“you're performing a kind of politics that's about your own intellectual and emotional needs and not about actually making change.”
w/ @jamestalarico
i’m going to say something brave.
talent pipelines should die. not every career needs a feeder school, feeder job, etc. people should be able to try things, learn on the job, and change direction as they grow.
we’ve optimized the serendipity out of professional life.
I never really believed this until a few years ago. Almost 50% of my business revenue came from opportunities I wouldn’t have even known about if I hadn’t done an unpaid internship 10 years earlier. That specific experience helped keep my business alive. Funny how things work out
@jin_jung1988 Not what I said. What I said is that you don’t need the perfect job to begin your career. That you can learn from that job and use what you learn to go on any direction you choose
You set a ridiculously high bar for yourself. You stare up at that mountain and have no idea how you're going to get to the top. But you're 100% certain you will. And you grind like crazy. And it's madness. And then you finally reach the top. And you don't stop for even a moment to take it all in. Instead you immediately charge ahead, and set an even higher bar for yourself. And you stare at that even higher mountain in front of you. And you do it all over again. You're not sure why this is the path you've chosen. But you love the pain, the grind, and the challenge. You love that treacherous journey, and you wouldn't have it any other way. That's entrepreneurship.